


Why some angels chose to become wingless.

by Yui_Miyamoto



Category: Tokyo Babylon, X -エックス- | X/1999
Genre: Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Cross-Posted on LiveJournal, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:54:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27143449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yui_Miyamoto/pseuds/Yui_Miyamoto
Summary: Many years after the Promised Day, Subaru and Kamui meet in the Tokyo that remains…or is it really?
Relationships: Sakurazuka Seishirou/Sumeragi Subaru, Shirou Kamui/Sumeragi Subaru
Kudos: 1





	Why some angels chose to become wingless.

**Disclaimer: Tokyo Babylon and X are the respective properties of the wonderful and brilliant Clamp.  
**  
“Good morning, my darling Subaru~!”   
  
Her voice touches my eardrums that I find my lips curving upward. I pretend to be asleep before she attacks like a cat ready to pounce.  
  
Without fail, right before I wake up, I feel her tender warmth enwrapping me and it settles smoothly into my heart. It is the same hug I’ve received everyday since we were born. Grandmother told me she put her leg over mine when we were lying in the hospital nursery with our nametags tied around our tiny ankles.  
  
And each time this reality fades whenever the sun radiates through the white and lavender butterfly curtains I carried from her room, I’m amazed I’m still here.   
  
Slowly blinking my eyes, I get up from the couch and slide the glass balcony door open. The curtains sweep around me as I walk out. Flicking the golden metal lighter, a blue flame lights up the last Mild Seven in the box. I cross over my arms to lean on the graphite-colored railing and take a long drag of my cigarette.  
  
As usual, my eyes scan the vivacious cityline before me with the water clasping onto the manmade beach. Then, I turn my face upwards to the sky I’ve always loved.   
Today, the cerulean tint mixes with the tart smell of the air, even within Tokyo’s disheveled appearance, suddenly brings me back to that day in Kyoto around Takeda Station.   
  
_/A burning cheek pressed against mine when two loving arms wrapped around me, squeezing my shoulders. Sparkling within your smiles, the warmth transferred into your fingertips as we ran across Koeda Bridge hand in hand. Your left and my right hands kept our matching navy blue straw hats in place while running down the dusty stone steps into the long stalks of grass, screaming happily to the sun.  
  
It was supposed to be a scary place, one of the last battlefields in the Boshin War, but as we pointed up at white-cheeked charcoal birds, our eyes really opened to the widely stretched out blue peppered with white. I didn’t have to see where the summer sun was to know that it was there, the humidity and its pulses of light twirling all around us.  
  
We were only three, laughing so much that we threw our hats into the air and lifted our arms out. We didn’t have to be birds to know how to fly because we already knew.   
  
When she let go, her palms and fingers lightly touched my shoulder blades. At that time, they were the perfect size: An invisible sketch of her hands on each identical bone. Maybe that was why I always loved how her hands felt against my back, pushing me along.   
“This is where wings used to be. I saw it in a picture book.”  
“Really? Why don’t we have them now, Hokuto-chan?”  
“They don’t say.”  
  
For some reason, I believed those magic words and they’ve been inside my heart ever since.   
  
I don’t know why but I feel them there./_  
  
That’s what I’d thought when I glanced at Hokuto-chan as she pulled me ahead with Grandmother watching us from behind, telling us to get our hats later on.   
  
We never went back there even though it was a few minutes away by train. The next day, I was trained to become the clan heir.  
  
“Happy Birthday, Hokuto.” I push my cigarette against the astray and go back inside to get ready.  
  
 **Why some angels chose to become wingless.  
by Miyamoto Yui**  
 _  
I can’t believe eight and a half years have passed since the apocalypse._  
  
While looking out of the train window, I’m still adjusting to his amber eye. It possesses trinkets and decides to ‘show me’ things when I least expect them.   
  
I guess there is a part of me that still can’t accept Seishirou gave me a part of himself. But allthemore, did he make it this obvious for me on purpose? After all, his mouth was never the place to search for his truths.  
  
Okay, if I thought about it that way, it would make perfect sense that he would give me exactly what I _should_ have seen.   
  
Without warning, again I suddenly see a vision of what used to be with the previous owner’s idiosyncrasies and feelings soaked inside. For whatever was left of his existence, whatever he had pondered about while he had this eye, ‘It’ would simultaneously show itself in my reality like a double feature, synchronically playing for me.  
 **  
I guess this is the only place where I can be myself.  
  
Cornered, it really is the only way I can keep sane, where I accept everything. To explain everything is…troublesome. Unless someone’s heart is whole or purely broken, they wouldn’t be able to experience things as I do.   
  
I can’t see why they have to be hung up on all the things that don’t matter.**  
  
At that moment, I pass a newly-opened apartment complex, but in the other eye, it was nothing but a large parking lot with a wide tar slope.  
  
Though I’m sometimes disoriented about what’s happening, I would realize just how well he’d known Tokyo. How well he had explored every single boundary line within and outside of it.   
  
_Seishirou-san wasn’t bored at all. There were no other challenges once he had had broken all the rules because he was the only one in his line of work._  
  
And yet, he had merged these dislocated lines by giving them all to me.  
  
Was I supposed to link them somehow? I know now that it wasn’t to really seek understanding but to uncover the person I was…  
  
…the way he was…  
  
…we were two sides of the same coin, seeking out the same questions with different strategies.  
  
Crossing over platforms and tapping my Swica card on one of Shinjuku station’s basement, level, and above level ticket gates, I head into the business district. Intimate and unknown skyscrapers greet me on the road towards a quiet neighborhood that’s between Nakano and Nishi-Shinjuku. The brick building inconspicuously lies on a slight slope, and I turn over the key and press the code 1122, the Scorpio birthdate that leaves me chilly: “I love what I love and I hate what I hate,” he said, tipping his head with the grace of a true gentleman.   
  
Walking down the sunless corridor and up to the elevator, I look around carefully, analyzing the path that Seishirou-san had probably taken as a child.  
I knew where I started so although it wasn’t home, I knew a place to return. Hokuto was there with me, after all. Even when I found myself alone, my older sister’s spirit still laid out the path right in front of me.   
  
You are my treasure, a jewel I keep close to me at all times.  
  
 _With this possessive mindset, you and Seishirou are truly indistinguishable, Onee-chan._  
  
Just as I was losing my mind after the War of the Dragons, Grandmother slapped me back into full consciousness. She was barely holding on and soon she too passed away, enough to see me safe before I had inherited everything.  
  
 _Living one life during the day and dying in another at night,  
how did you last for so long, Seishirou-san? _  
  
The heavy door clicks open.   
  
The old men gave me their information, but are forgetful when I reach this point in their game. Still not wanting to take responsibility, they say they don’t want the rumored curse of this apartment’s ghosts haunting them.   
It is no use though. You’ve already set your own traps anyway.  
  
With all the news about how ‘peaceful’ things are, they are just holding down a lid that can no longer be contained. It is a repeat of the end of samurai: You can’t change the surface and keep the heart the same.   
That’s how Edo became Tokyo and why Tokyo imploded.   
  
On the surface, it was a money bubble. Now, it has sunk its teeth into its own people.  
  
I take off my shoes at the genkan and walk into the living room. The mahogany coffee table on top of the wooden floors, it’s an innovation too early for when this place was built. The white tablecloth with its matching chairs in the kitchen…  
Beyond that, I finally see past the long balcony and at the tree that had lasted decades after its owners couldn’t take care of it. Its haunting colors illuminate in impulses and immortal petals twist in the air around it.  
  
 _It’s still blooming._  
  
Going down the hallway, I open the door of the furthest room. A latent smell of camellia permeates the room, a ghost not wanting to let go. The tatami mat floors revealed the root of tradition amassed between modern accessories. I unlock the multilayered wooden chest of drawers with small, intricate designs of hummingbirds. A baby blue sheath covers white underkimonos until I reach a sheen layers of colored kimonos, each rainbow hue more brilliant the deeper I search.  
  
His mother…  
A girl at heart, dressed as an adult, and killing for no other reason but having the skill to do so, a sharpened sword ready to strike at anytime for her retainer. No history before or after…  
  
You could say she was like the people in that field I’d visited decades ago, warriors protecting the old and getting destroyed by it when they were no longer needed.  
  
 _Was that why choosing their moment of death was so important to them?_  
  
As for me, grandmother tried as much as possible that I didn’t feel that constraint. I only felt it outside of my home, in school and with my job. People either admired for what you did or hated for what you were.   
I understood early on that they mostly didn’t want to understand because they thought that the impossible should remain that way. That it automatically went under the mental category of ‘unable to attain’.  
  
The shimmering crimson kimono flashed at me, its threads glittering over my wrists. A single crane sewn at the hem is always ready to take flight with its proud beak in the air. I end up stroking my hands on the smooth fabric and then move onto to the other adjoining room separated by a single screen door.   
  
When I slid the door open, my emerald eye begins to tear up. A potent smell of his cologne dwindles in the air. Or is it just my imagination?  
  
A wooden desk at the corner stands next to a closet, complete with a door that forces me to face my full reflection. I lower my eyes to one side of the split mirror door, revealing drawers each filled with old cigarette lighters, gloves, and wallets. The last drawer, surprisingly, with ties rolled.   
I finger one of the diamond and stripped patterns, noticing they were separated from the others.  
  
“Wasn’t this…?” I chuckle and hold up an array of alternating blue and green diamonds bordered in white.   
  
_/“I work in a vet clinic. Where will I wear such a pretty thing, Hokuto-chan?” His teeth shined as he shook his head. “Why the sudden present?”  
“Because I love you, Sei-chan.” She giggled while holding her cheek against his, smiling with her eyes closed. “There is no reason.”  
“Thank you then.” He pushed his cheek cutely back at hers in response, and then pulled my wrists towards hiim. “You look lonely.”  
“I’m not-”  
But he already pressed his lips against my blushing face./_  
  
Hanging on the other side of the mirror were every color of designer suits and blouses, complete with pairs of shoes below them. But another section is full of coats…coats with the same name brand, but in different styles, lapels and zippers in alternative places.   
  
I embrace it as hard as I can, trying to find him there.  
 **  
Monster.**  
  
My green eye sheds a tear as I watch him listlessly pull the closet door to look for another new coat. The one he was wearing was splattered in some government opposer’s blood.   
  
_You’ve lived on the other side knowing that you’d never understand ‘normal’._  
  
Perhaps that’s why I wanted to get close to you. After all these ‘jobs’, there came a time I didn’t care about definitions anymore. And then, you appeared in Ikebukuro station.  
  
 _I realized we weren’t alone…  
…only people who sacrificed their humanity can understand this kind of thing._  
  
That is the dilemma most people have. Because they didn’t want to live without, they didn’t know how to live with what they already had.  
 _  
After all, who would give up their life for something they didn’t know about?_  
  
I find the paper that the old men wanted.  
  
 **  
#######################################[#](https://www.livejournal.com/rsearch/?tags=%23)########################**  
  
Leaving the swirl of black clouds rising behind me, the ear-piercing sirens pass by me while I slipstream behind the sea of salary workers finishing their lunches and cross the underground corridors to dive into the afternoon rush across town, taking the long way towards my ‘home’.  
  
My mind emptily watches the familiar names show up on the train’s tv screen in large green, Arial letters.  
  
Shinjuku…Harajuku….Shibuya…  
  
I watched over this city, thinking that by being one of the guardians, I could do something. Then I realized that it really took all the people around you to be involved, to be aware of what was going on within themselves.   
  
_Sorata,  
Arashi,  
Seiichirou,  
Karen,  
Yuzuriha…_  
  
Folding my hands, I lean on the side to watch everything with eyes wide open.  
  
 _Kamui._  
  
However, are we part of some other era? When I look at the rows of people looking at their phones anxiously, more and more people are changing. Technology, values, even the core of our traditions.  
  
Adapting to circumstances isn’t equal to giving feeling to the simple things of life. These are the things that outlive people in the end. After all, everyone is searching over and over for the same truths: Worth, Respect, Love.  
  
Shinagawa…  
  
My eyes gaze into the bay.  
  
 _I know you’ve been here many times. Your eye told me every time I passed by.  
  
It’s as if you knew that you’d always stay here behind the Yamanote tracks, never leaving this city while looking out._  
  
No one should have to live as someone’s double. But it’s also difficult to choose to live for yourself too:  
  
Electronics – Talking without really speaking, searching without really learning, using without thorough understanding.  
Isolation - Not having to come out of your house, not wanting to leave your home, pressing a vending machine for your food instead of asking a server.  
Manners – Do you serve the people who are ‘authorities’ or the people who need real help?  
Education – Learning to answer the way you should or how your passion responds?   
Status – Privileges for a brand name or respect from the small group who understands you?  
  
Somehow underneath it all, appreciation for conveniences is now dulled to self-gratification.  
  
How many years later and I still can’t get used to the new technology. My phone hides in one of my pockets, waiting to be swiped. Before, it was the pager that Sei-chan would make fun of, but now, everything is growing at an exponential rate. Sometimes, I wonder when information will pour into my bloodstream.   
  
But that’s one thing that people can’t achieve though they have all the resources:   
  


**Knowledge**.

  
  
Even if you gave people everything they needed, it was still useless if you couldn’t teach them the skills as to why or how it had to function. In the end, there’s nothing deep, but just a regurgitation of what someone else had told them.

  
**There was no experience behind what they had ‘learned’  
because no one wanted to get ‘hurt’.**

  
  
_/On a whim, he brought me there once to ‘his bridge’. He brought me to the bottom of what would later be called ‘Shibaura-futo’. Standing there at night with the cranes overhead and waves washing against the tar shores below, he intertwined our fingers and passing me a piece of some French pastry he’d picked up at Iseton’s department store’s basement. I took a bite of the powered sugar, flakes fluttering down to the gravel.  
  
It was the first time he held my hand that tightly. And he didn’t let go even when he brushed his index finger over my lips.   
  
I was glad we came out of the bustle of Shinjuku, as much as my sister loved Harajuku or Ikebukuro. Even when I went to go visit him in his clinic at Kabuki-cho, I was very weary and the atmosphere made me sick.  
  
There were too many people with too many ideas. They weren’t all good, but now, not everyone can tell the difference anymore.  
  
So, on the other side of Tokyo, under the moonlit evening, I looked up into his face, partly lit and partly darkened. While explaining why this was ‘his’ in the most elusive way, Seishirou just claimed it like he did with me.   
  
“I wonder when they’ll finish this.”  
“Why?”  
“Because someday, I want to live on the other side, in Odaiba…” He kept on watching the lapping waves, “…with you and Hokuto-chan.”  
My eyes lowered shyly, finding myself smiling at his dream. “You sound so sure of that.”  
“I have to.”/_  
  
He said it and therefore it was done.   
  
If I could pinpoint a single memory as to when I was aware that I began to care for him, that was it.   
It was the first and last time he ever told me of his ‘dream’.  
  
At the time, the confusing endearments eluded me. I had grown to learn that it was just his way. Everything that was Seishirou’s was like that. If he explained it any further, then it really wasn’t his.  
  
At the next announcement, I get ready to step off the train when they open up for Ueno.  
  
 **  
#######################################[#](https://www.livejournal.com/rsearch/?tags=%23)########################**  
  
By the time, I get to the other side of seagreen Kototoi Bridge, I don’t like the fact that I can’t see the outside.  
  
On the elevator up, I look to one side of me and stare into the steel wall, noticing a small dent at the far corner. All I can remember is us: 16, 25, and 33. When these numbers pass, my heart aches for a little bit.   
Now, I’m the same age as you. I’m middle-aged, however looking as what Kamui termed “ageless”. Physically we deteriorate, but your countenance remains as it is if you are true to who you are. That is the essence of aging well.  
I cough thinking of the brat. Talk about pot calling out the kettle. He has the same ‘disease’ as I do.   
_  
Are we really that similar, I wonder?_  
  
When the doors open, I walk up to one of the rectangular windows and find myself staring over at the Tower. I tilt my head just in amusement. The lights of the city surround a patch of darkness. It is the only part with green on it.   
  
I actually like that space though. You have to go far out of the capital to find anything that hasn’t been touched, altered, or demolished by people.  
  
Things grow there naturally. They don’t die as quickly. That’s why I’m sad whenever I go to the shrines where people didn’t really go to, yet they are significant.   
  
People are forgetting what they’re worth.  
  
“You came up here.”  
 _  
Why am I surprised? This is your office anyway._  
  
Outwardly, I don’t react at all. I keep my eyes on the glowing reddish-orange.   
  
“Kamui.”  
“Please try to act a little more surprised, Subaru-san.”  
“That is the problem with prey, I mean ESPers.”  
He chuckles. ”Is that sarcasm I hear from Mr. I’m-still-too-polite-to-cross-the-street-when-it’s-red even though half of the world’s been wiped out?”  
“It’s still the same to me…” I turn around to lean on the railing and look at him straight in the eye. “…as long as Ueno remains.”   
He immediately becomes silent, walking over to me and watches the stars both in the sky and in our city.  
  
 _That’s right. Even if they’re confused because of global warming, as long as the cherry blossoms still bloom there, time will pass for all of us._  
  
Kanoe isn’t here anymore. You can’t ask her anything. She can’t steal the info of someone who that’s gone mad. Her sister, that is.  
  
But that’s what these people want: To climb without risks. That is impossible though. I guess that is why they call our city “Babylon”, people wishing for their own destruction. When they forget to appreciate life, they hurt everything around them.   
  
Especially themselves, blaming everyone else for their unhappiness.  
Where did the meaning of “Thank you” disappear off to?  
  
That’s why I’m visiting Sky Tree. At first, I was very upset they made this new structure, but they still used the Tower as a communication radar. I shake my head at the irony of it all.   
  
Why did they make this in the most traditional part of the city anyway? I keep my views to myself, but it bothered me until I came today. Suddenly, I feel Seishirou’s cold presence between us, saying with a voice resting between amusement or prophecy, **“The moment before everything starts or ends, that is ecstasy in its purest form.”**  
  
I close my eyes for a minute.  
  
 _Passionate and hopeless. How could a quandary exist as an actual person?_  
  
I touch that mismatched eye with my fingers.   
_  
My colors were always off anyway..._  
  
When I open my eyes again, I see my reflection and blink. Total darkness for a split second.  
  
The last battle was the most honest he’d ever been with me.  
  
 _We are the same. I always pretended we weren’t because my head knew what my heart couldn’t deny._  
  
Kamui leans over to whisper into my ear, “You smell of gasoline.”  
I look over into his profile. “Until now, you’re following me?”  
  
This reminds me of the days when I’d sit in the patio at campus. Somehow, he’d always find me even though I just sat there as a bodyguard. It was the cigarettes, he’d say. But I knew he timed his appearances, watching my silent gestures before walking towards me.  
Back then, he was only in high school, along with some of the others. I happened to be one of the older ones.  
  
We were the half that still believed in the goodness that remained.  
  
But Sei crossed that line to give me his wish.  
  
I think there was a part of him that didn’t believe in this path, just it was the only thing he knew. For many years, I’ve scavenged through the city to find traces of the camellia’s or his things, each place slowly spelling out the letters for me in their neat disorder.   
  
That’s why he made the bet with me. Why didn’t I get that he wanted me to challenge him? To prove his way of life wasn’t the exact way.  
  
But with that, he shattered his whole reality.  
  
Only I knew what remained, just like all the buildings that had survived.  
  
 _It wasn’t like people stopped believing in God, but they stopped seeing the integrity within each human. Without that trust, God cannot exist.  
  
That is the core of Babylon’s existence._  
  
“I’ve not seen you since then.”  
  
 _/“You know that if you remain here I will be forced to make you my prey?  
By accepting this, you shouldn’t trust me anymore.”  
“If you have to, then so be it.”  
“You seem so determined. You knew once I took this oath from Fuuma I was no longer part of your team.”  
“As long as it’s of your will, Subaru, I’ll learn to accept it.”  
  
Those transparent scarlet eyes seared themselves into my brain./_  
  
“But I’m here before you now.”  
“Are we still deciding the fate of this half broken world? Everyone’s living in a different part of Japan now trying to pray for the best and redirecting the ‘future’. Only we’ve remained here. Why can’t we-”  
  
“As long as Tokyo stands, I must stay here,” I bow my head to glance at the tiled floor. “Look at all this. Does it really matter to save these dead people? They don’t even care for each other anymore. Look at them push and shove without regret.”  
  
 _After all we’ve fought for, they still haven’t learned._  
  
We live in the grays of standards and we’re treated as ‘unreal’.   
  
Why did we protect them? Everyone’s empty here. Apathy replaced any kind of strong emotion. Anything that was good turned into suspicion.  
  
Almost twenty years after my soul bled away, this is the disappointment I have for modern society.   
  
Then, the amber eye starts to throb: **All they’ll do is compete for they don’t want to be left out.**  
  
I continue, “That’s what they think is important even though we don’t think so.”  
Kamui places his hand on my shoulder. “You’re not like him. You can’t be like him because you don’t believe in what he put everything into.”  
“Don’t talk about Seishirou-san as if you know,” I snap back. “That is something I won’t forgive.”  
  
The name leaves a bittersweet taste on my tongue after years of disuse.  
  
 _Kamui, I don't know why. How could you and Seishirou both be ‘right’?  
_  
I cover half of my face as the pain squeezes around His eye once more.   
  
Contrary to nature, the pursued one had lived.  
  
 _Why did I remain when the both of you had to leave me behind?_  
  
Even when I watch Kamui as the lights of Asakusa dimly light his face, I search into his soul. This is the small part of Tokyo where its old decadence still lives, constantly tipping its scales of new and old to find its own balancing scheme.   
  
“You kept that part,” I say as I avert my eyes from his.  
“Oh, that wasn’t me. The people saved it.” His hand reluctantly pulls away from my shoulder.  
  
Long ago, it was the place to go for entertainment…the place to watch a mix of theater and movies, mixed foreign and Japanese performances, both light and vulgar…  
  
But still, the main reason people came was to pray to Kannon-sama.  
  
“Why do you come after me when I’m supposed to kill you?”  
  
All I can is hold back the tears that threaten to fall.  
  
 _When I lost Seishirou-san and Hokuto, I thought I had lost the bet, and with it, everything.  
  
It wasn’t true at all.  
  
In the end, Seishirou didn’t care to bet on the world or his philosophy.  
  
He had bet on me.  
Not against.  
  
The same eye that saw Hokuto die, the same one that watched me fight back.  
  
In my heart, I still believed in this world, decrepit and barren as it had become.  
  
And the one who had called me back from floating was you, wasn’t it? I came back because of you, Kamui.  
_  
Eye-to-eye, I’m conscious of my heart beating wildly…  
  
Disappearing from his sight, I run along the cement pathway of Sumida River. Even when the worst had happened, I was still true to myself. That even until now, I could hold onto this eye and still love. Maybe even more.  
  
When I blink again, Kamui is panting under the lamplights, holding his knees and with sweat dripping on the ground.  
  
“Aren’t you the prey? Why are you running after me?” I find this so amusing that I begin to laugh, a sound I hadn’t made in a very long time. “Are you that anxious to die?”  
  
“You’re as slow as ever, Subaru-san.”   
“Why is that?”  
  
“You don’t have to understand why people love you, Subaru. Why they are always chasing after you…  
“More than freedom, you’re still untainted. You look at people from this innocence no matter how old you are. So only someone equal to that can love you. I’m jealous and grateful to the Sakurazukamori because his dishonest words are overshadowed by that eye.”  
  
When he turns away, I see a slight smile on his profile with his deep, ruby eyes glistening in the light and strength that finally matches the name “Kamui”. He is no longer the teenager I protected at Clamp Campus. The jaw had become harder and his features were sharper under the florescent light of the street lamp.   
  
_He’s grown up._  
  
“So it’s okay if you chase after me…from the time I saw you in your vision bubble, you were part of my wish anyway.”  
  
With my own wind, I run up the hill to catch up to him. I fall and taste the dirt but I keep on grasping for a piece of it. I didn’t know that it was elation. Joy was something that was in the territory of childhood. They said it was a given, but when I grew older, I ran through the same field of grass. I pull on the knob of Hokuto’s tie and throw my gloves to the side. I was tired with the truth burning into my eyes. How could I still cry with happiness at such simplicity?   
  
It is a wonderful thing to feel alive again.  
  
 _Ah…I understand now why some angels chose to become wingless…Why they yearned to become mere humans…_  
  
For the first time, I won’t remain where I had stood. I am no longer that confused teenager that watched things happen without a whole answer. Or that twenty-year-old that twisted the flowered memories in my mind.  
  
I reach out my arm to grab his wrist.   
_  
We tore our own wings as an exchange for a greater eternity._  
  
“Suba-“  
I hug him from behind, crisscrossing my arms across his chest. The trenchcoat Seishirou had given me covers some of his body. My lips and teeth grazing against his neck as I smell the same scent that had used to faintly arouse me even when I sat at that patio.  
My fingers pulsate at the fact that I want to rip his flesh open until I could feel the hollowness of his ribcage.  
  
So this was the reverberating ache Seishirou felt as he watched me since I was small.   
  
**Even if I love or destroy it, it still won’t ever be completely mine.**  
  
His eye pulsed worse than ever, but I could temporarily ignore the pain…  
  
 _You don’t know it yet, but you will kill me too. Until then, I will enjoy chasing after you, Kamui._  
  
  
 **+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+/+  
**  
All of this eclipses before me until Kamui’s tear-filled eyes cry onto my face.  
  
The screaming of people overpowers the rumbling of the earth. Buildings self-destruct as I struggle to breathe and focus on him. As he holds me with one arm, the other lifts up his straightened palm, fingers dripping with that hot, red pulsing substance.   
  
“Thank you for my wish, Kamui.”  
  
Kneeling onto the ground, I cry, all my feelings gushing out from who knows where. With all the strength I have left in me, I embrace him.   
  
Our dream is finally finished.  
  
“You can’t kill. And he knew that this cursed line would die with you.  
Was there no space for me, Subaru? I know you’ve been watching over me since I was small, listening in the shadows when my powers were still weak.”  
  
I hold his young cheek and press it to mine while smiling joyfully. “Did you know the Sakurazukamori can only be killed by the one they love the best?”  
  
From the camellia to the hawk and into a dove…  
  
His eyes widen suddenly as my eyes tiredly blink at him, pulling his neck to kiss me and pressing my tongue even when I taste the blood rising. Kamui pushes even more to sweep it into his mouth to swallow it.   
  
_It was good that I had two wings, one heart,  
and a whole soul. _  
  
“Sweet dreams, Subaru.”  
  
I grin even wider.  
  
Blink.   
  
I hold out my hand towards his face as the amber eye cringes into knife-like sensations…  
  
/“You will be killed by the one you love the best.”  
“Why is that mother?”  
She didn’t answer me.  
  
 **Because when you meet them, you know your life is no longer your own.  
  
They give and take away the one thing you’ll always lack: Confidence to live through everything.**/  
  
Blink…blink.  
  
…smearing my bloodied thumb across his lower lip, I close my eyes. He holds me closer than ever.  
 _ **  
That’s why we need each other.**  
  
Isn’t it ironic we keep coming up with the same conclusions, Seishirou-san?_  
  
“You were the last one I wanted to protect.”  
  
Not the city, not my memories,   
just you Kamui.  
  
 **  
Owari. / The End.  
**

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, my lovely, melancholic Tokyo.
> 
> It is a funny thing because although as an author I think, “Ah, I’ve exhausted Tokyo Babylon and Gravitation as far as I can mentally go”, when I walk through the city, I honestly can feel the three are with me. It’s strange to explain it and after all these years, Subaru, Hokuto, and Seishirou are still teaching me things.
> 
> It took a year and a half to write this, and I have mixed feelings, seeing as I’m a die-hard Su/Sei fan, but it gives me a sense of peace as well.  
> Honestly, having written this fic, I’m glad it isn’t over. There is a warm feeling in my chest alone at knowing this.
> 
> Sorry Su and Hoku, I thought I could make it for your birthday this year, but it was still delayed. Belated Happy Birthday!
> 
> Thank you for reading.
> 
> Love,  
> Yui


End file.
